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/ 11 May 2005

MWeb chief raises spectre of retrenchments

MWeb may have to retrench 109 employees after its acquisition of Tiscali South Africa three months ago, it was reported on Wednesday. The company’s chief executive, Kim Reid, said "certain duplications and/or redundancies" have been determined after MWeb evaluated the effects of acquiring Tiscali and combining the two businesses.

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/ 11 May 2005

Blair faces Labour rebels

British Prime Minister Tony Blair faced a closed-door meeting with his restive Labour Party on Wednesday during his first real confrontation with lawmakers who have called for him to resign after Labour’s majority was slashed in last week’s election.

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/ 11 May 2005

Jesus Christ battles for his name

Jesus Christ is having trouble convincing United States courts to let him keep his name. It’s not the Messiah who is facing this problem, of course, but an American business-owner who, about 15 years ago, adopted the name of the Christian God’s son. The man, born Peter Robert Phillips Jnr, started his legal battle in 2003.

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/ 11 May 2005

Catapult plant breaks speed records

A tiny Canadian shrub is the quickest-moving thing in the plant world, using a catapult mechanism to eject its pollen at a speed hundreds of times faster than a launched rocket, scientists have found. The plant, bunchberry dogwood, grows in thick carpets in the vast swampy, spruce-fir forests of the North American taiga.

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/ 11 May 2005

British donkeys win lunch break

For more than a century, teams of donkeys have carried tourists down the beach at Blackpool, one of Britain’s top tourist destinations. But only now are they to get a compulsory lunch break. A wide-ranging "employment rights" charter for donkeys was announced on Wednesday.

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/ 11 May 2005

Namibian farm advert draws comment

A recent newspaper advert exhorting the owners of farmland in Namibia to provide their details to the government, or face a stiff fine, imprisonment or both, has brought a flood of responses. The advert named the owners of about 1 000 farms who have not provided the ministry of land and resettlement with their contact details.